The Boggart
by ASWhite
Summary: Lupin meets a boggart unexpectedly in number twelve...


Okay, this is something I was going to put into my story Seven Years, but in the end there was no suitable place for it. But I quite like it so I thought I'd just put it up here. Being something that was meant for something else it's a bit disjointed so I apologise for that. It takes place at the beginning of the fifth book when Harry, Hermione and the Weasleys were living in Grimmauld Place.

THE BOGGART

I came back to Grimmauld place feeling exhausted. Spending a whole day trying to convince sceptical magical academics that they should let a werewolf carry out magical experiments at their university was tiring work. Not least because I wasn't getting anywhere. When I walked through the front door instead of being hit by imaginative insults from Mrs Black as I usually was, I was struck by the twin grins of Fred and George.

"Hello Professor!" cried Fred excitedly.

"Care for some Nougat?" asked George with a sly smile. He held a small plate full of red coloured nougat sweets. If Fred and George's reputation for pulling pranks wasn't enough to deter me from trying one of their sweets, the mischievous glint in George's eyes certainly was.

"Er, no," I chuckled, "what do you take me for?"

"Dammit," cursed Fred thumping his fist at the air.

"We need to test these on someone," added George, his freckled nose wrinkled in frustration.

"What to they do?"

"They give you a nose bleed -" explained George.

"Not a really bad one -" added Fred.

"Just bad enough to get you out of class -"

"Then you can eat the other half, this lighter coloured bit-" George pointed to the paler half of one of the nougat sweets.

"And that stops the nose bleed," finished Fred with a proud smile.

I laughed again as they finally let me walk into the hallway, shut the door behind me, lock it with a few spells, and take off my cloak and scarf.

"You know, if you two put as much effort into your school work..." I began, but was cut off by loud groans of exasperation by the both of them.

"What would be the point in that?"

"Sounds just like mum..."

Less than five seconds later and they had given up on me and sauntered off upstairs to try and find another victim. I chuckled again and walked towards the doorway off the hall that led down to the kitchen. Before I got there though, Harry and Hermione appeared out of the Garden room and greeted me with happy hellos. Harry looked much less troubled than the last time I had seen him. His forehead wasn't creased, his shoulders were dropped and his eyes much more open. He looked so much like James. The same unmanageable hair, round glasses and Rolling Stones cool. Hermione too had grown up a lot since the Summer, though it was hard to pin down exactly what had changed.

"If you're looking for Sirius, he's in the garden room with Ron playing chess," Hermione told me. I thanked her and walked to the room that looked onto the garden.

"Oh thank Merlin, you can help me, I'm getting killed here!" Sirius exclaimed when I walked in. He was sitting cross legged on the floor opposite Ron with a chess board between them. I walked over and examined the board.

"Oh dear, I don't think anyone can help you now Sirius," I remarked.

"Well if you're not going to be of any help, you can go back to Oxford!" joked Sirius. I saw Sirius about to move the only knight he had left and held a hand out to stop him. I whispered some advice in his ear, so Sirius moved his queen instead. After a few minutes Ron groaned.

"Getting help is cheating," he complained. Even with my help Sirius still lost the game. Ron demanded his two galleon prize and left to tell Harry and Hermione how spectacularly Sirius had been beaten.

"How'd it go with the Oxford wizards?" Sirius asked me as he magicked away the chess board. I sat down in one of the rattan chairs by the french doors and sighed.

"Not great," I said. "They were polite enough to say they'd think about letting me test the spells there, but even as I said it they looked at me like they were afraid I'd bite them."

Sirius gave me a sympathetic look and stood up.

"You seen Tonks today?" he asked me.

"No, why?"

"She wanted to see you," Sirius said. I frowned slightly and tried to think why she'd be looking for me. I could think of only two possibilities: the first was that she needed to speak to be about some Order business, the second was that she'd realised that all the stupid jokes I told her and stories about charms were just a feeble attempt at flirting. I very much hoped it was the former.

"Did she say what it was about?" I asked Sirius, who shrugged. I felt relieved. If Tonks had noticed my growing infatuation for her she would probably have told Sirius, and he would probably have told me. Sirius and I talked for a while about the Order and about the Weasley brood's ongoing attempts to cleanse number twelve of decades of dust and evil. Then Sirius went off to make himself a coffee and I stayed in the sunlit garden room to do some work.

I tired after a while and, thinking that a short snooze before dinner might be beneficial, I began the journey up to Regulus's room. I reached the landing of the first floor and was about to continue upstairs when the hairs on the back of my neck prickled, as if a wave of static electricity had been passed over them. Something untoward had caught my attention. I turned to face the door of the drawing room, which was slightly ajar. I could see the Black family tapestry and I noticed that the silver branches woven into it were gleaming in a very peculiar manner; as if a light were shining on them. I walked towards the drawing room. Then I saw the cause of the strange reflections and my heart stopped dead in my chest. I gasped as terror overtook me. I could see the moon through the window, and it was huge and bright and _full_. _No! No it can't be!_ I begged. It wasn't due yet. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't safe. The house was full of children! I felt suffocated with fear as I looked at that bright round sphere. All I could think about were the mutilated bodies of the Weasley children, and of my own teeth and claws tearing apart James's son.

"SIRIUS!" I shouted my body shaking with desperation. I stumbled back to the landing. I heard a door behind me open and I turned round sharply. Ron was looking at me puzzled at my apparent distress.

"He's in his room I think," he said. I stared at him incredulously: why was he not running for his life?

"What?" I jabbered.

"Sirius. He's in his room," said Ron. With my heart still pounding I walked back into the drawing room. I looked at the window, but the moon had gone. Feeling utterly bewildered I looked into the heart of the room. With another shock of fear I saw the moon again. Only it was miniature and hovering unnaturally in the air. It was a boggart. I sighed with relief and pulled out my wand. I pointed it at the boggart and calmly announced 'ridikulus', but I couldn't think of anything funny. My mind was still deluged with images of myself murdering the ones I love. In the end I had to just force the boggart back into the writing desk from whence it came to be dealt with later.

I walked back into the hallway, and saw that Ron was still standing at the door of the bedroom he and Harry shared. His face was turned back into the room, no doubt so he could tell Harry about my strange behaviour. When Ron noticed that I had returned he turned back to look at me.

"Is everything alright professor?" he asked politely. I suddenly felt very embarrassed to be called 'professor'. Surely a professor would not have been so disturbed by a measly boggart?

"You don't need to call me professor, Ron, you can call me Remus," I said, "and everything is fine. I just found a boggart that I think will take two people to deal with. Please excuse me."

I made my way upstairs to Sirius's room. After knocking on the door, I found him standing on a chair pulling shoeboxes from the top of the wardrobe, peering inside them, then throwing them onto the bed, so that their contents (assorted pieces of junk mostly, a few quills, the odd exercise book, a few photograph of motorbikes and some gobstones) spilled onto the maroon bedcovers.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm looking for that old mirror of James's, I want to give it to Harry. I thought I left it here but I can't seem to find it anywhere," Sirius explained before coughing violently as the dust on top of his wardrobe assailed his lungs.

"Perhaps Kreacher has it," I suggested.

"Mm, maybe," Sirius mumbled before looking at me. I clenched my teeth as Sirius's penetrating eyes assessed me. "What's happened?" he added knowingly.

"I just had the life frightened out of me by a boggart." I sat down on the bed and causally picked up one of the gobstones.

"Well that is what they are supposed to do." Sirius got down from the chair. I continued to examine the gobstone. "What is your boggart again?"

"A full moon," I replied.

"Ah yes, the thing that Moony fears most is himself," Sirius said with pretend grandeur. I sighed and gave him a 'don't-mock-me' look. Sirius's smile faded a little. He folded his arms and leant against the chest of draws. I looked again at the grains running across the marble gobstone.

"I could have killed all of you," I murmured, putting the gobstone down.

"No, it was a boggart. It is not really the full moon. It wont be for another two weeks." Sirius's tone was more reassurance than patronisation. I nervously rubbed my hands together and tried to stop imagining them covered in blood.

"But what if that happened? What if I forgot? What if the full moon came and I wasn't ready?" I asked quietly.

"Moony, you never forget."

"That's not true. I have forgotten in the past. I forgot at Hogwarts, when you came to the shrieking shack – and look what happened then."

"That was an unusual case," said Sirius. "Look, I'd never let you hurt anyone Remus. And you are normally very careful. Don't worry about it. It was just a boggart."

Just a boggart. But of course it wasn't was it? It was a very real fear. One that I could never let go. One I would always have to live with.


End file.
